On December 18, 2023, the Jordanian army announced that it had foiled a large-scale attempt to smuggle drugs, machineguns and – for the first time – rockets into the country, after several days in which the number of smuggling attempts had dropped. 

The army reported that, early in the morning that day, severe clashes had broken out on the Syrian border between Jordanian border guards and the armed cells that were trying to bring in the contraband, and that Jordanian border guards had been wounded. 

In response, Jordan reportedly carried out several airstrikes in southern Syria in areas along the border where the smugglers were operating. Jordanian government spokesman Muhannad Mubaidin said that the kingdom’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, had spoken to his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian about the matter. Mubaidin added: “We clarified to Iran that the smuggling attempts by its militias in Syria must stop.”

Against the backdrop of these smuggling attempts, Lebanese journalist ‘Ali Hamada published an article in the Lebanese Al-Nahar daily, in which he warned against Iran’s attempts to use the war in Gaza as an opportunity to undermine the stability and sovereignty of Jordan. 

He notes that Iran has long been attempting, by means of the militias it supports in Syria, to undermine Jordan’s stability by flooding the country with drugs and by using it as a corridor for smuggling weapons and drug from Syria. 

Now, he says, Iran and its affiliated terrorist groups are leveraging the war in Gaza to implement their plans. They are encouraging mass gatherings on Jordan’s border with Iraq and attempts to breach the border under the slogan of “Solidarity with Gaza.” 

They are also attempting to inflame the Jordanian public with calls to escalate the popular resistance within Jordan, calls which have also been made by Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida.

The following are translated excerpts from Hamada’s article:

“Observers already know that one of the goals of the Iranian plan for the region is [undermining] the stability of the Jordanian Hashemite Kingdom. The Iraqi factions – which are subordinate to the Iran’s Qods Force, headed by Esmail Qaani – are putting pressure on the Jordan-Iraq border by means of mass gatherings at the [Iraq-Syria-Jordan] border triangle, on the pretext of trying to reach the Israeli border via Jordan in order to come to the rescue of Gaza!

“A quick look at a map of the Middle East would have told the organizers of this popular action that the shortest route to the Israeli border runs through Syria, which has become an open playing field for Iran and the factions subordinate to it. 

The closest point to the [Israeli] border, where it is possible to put pressure on Israel, is the ceasefire line in the [Syrian] Golan between Syria and the occupied Golan. The organizers of the mass gathering on the Iraq-Jordan border didn’t bother to consider an easier, wider, shorter, more efficient route by which to send the masses [into Israel] – [although] 
Iran wields decisive influence in Syria, which allows it to send tens of thousands or even millions of people into [Israel] waving numerous slogans. 

Why, then, the insistence on [organizing] gatherings on the Jordanian border, particularly considering that the latter was firmly opposed from the outset to the use of its territory as a corridor for protests of this kind coming from across the border? The goals are well-known, and the Iraqi factions whose supporters gathered [on the Jordanian border] know very well that any attempt to cross the border will be met with [a response] from a resolute Jordanian force.

Source: IMFAT (Iran)